Conspicuous Consumption
Conspicuous consumption refers to the practice of increasingly spending money to buy more and more expensive items as a depiction of affluence and social acceptability. The term was coined in 1899 by the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his book ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class”. The type of goods for which demand increases as the price increases are called Veblen goods. The exclusive nature of certain luxury goods leads to this phenomenon.